Camera lets you literally look like an insect

The camera project was led by a team from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and consists of 180 imaging elements
(lenses) arranged to cover a near-full hemispherical shape giving
160 degree vision.

But the team is envisioning a far more complex structure further
down the line. "The compound design of the fly's eye incorporates
perhaps 28,000 small eyes, or ommatidia," said Jianliang Xiao, one
of the study's authors, to
BBC News. "That's the direction we want to move in."

The development of more complex compound vision structures has
previously been hampered by the inability of existing sensor
technologies and conventional optical systems to deal with the
design requirements of a hemispherical compound eye. The
Illinois-led team were able to use advances in elastic materials in
combination with electronics to achieve the desired result.

The study notes that, in terms of sensors, the current iteration
of the "eye" is comparable to those of fire ants and bark beetles.
Unsurprisingly, one of the main potential uses of the camera is in
surveillance technology.